But then again, I dont use facebook, dropbox or gmail for the same reason. (Instead I use selfhosted solutions.) So I am an unimportant minority. Its a pity that the trend with new solutions is towards use of centralization instead of decetralization, which gave us Internet, email and even parlament democracy. As I sad before, if email were to be invented today it would be single company's project backed by YC that would rule us all.
So you can still use the hardware even if you don't like their software.
Given the portability of the device, it's doubtful that lockitron even knows what it's unlocking at any given time.
What about if they have a security breach and a command is issued to unlock all locks (or a large number of locks) not a specific target.
Then you have a bunch of doors that are open and the chance certainly exists that random people will enter those doors because they are unlocked.
Then again, I also have a similar setup using an HID tag reader/arduino/relay to control access to my garage door, so it's not like I'm against the technology. It's more that I'm worried about outsourcing the security of my house.
Honestly, the threat profile to me personally is pretty low, but it's still not something I'm 100% comfortable with.
J. Random Hacker from Waziristan hacks your account at the lock company.
So? He is _there_ and you are _here_. Annoying but not fatal.
Unless you're worried that he has a cousin in town?
99.99% of the time, the only people that touch my front doorknob have keys.
I understand the point you are making. But I think the perception here is important as well. And even though the probability of someone opening the door is quite slim people still lock doors anyway. Irrationality plays into this. People lock bathroom doors even though only part of the time they are exposed in any way shape or form. Most of the time they are only sitting down on the toilet seat (or if a many perhaps standing for a brief period).
Personally on the one hand I agree with you and rationally it isn't a credible threat. But what if I am away on vacation and the door is unlocked during that week that I am away and I don't know about it? How comfortable do I feel with my office door being unlocked for a week? It's a small chance of a big thing happening. (Even if 99.99%).
I don't know who these people might be - but I know they are out there.
Maybe having your locks NAT out or phone home to a third party is a bit much for a lot of people, as it opens new vectors, but you know, bricks and windows and such.
That also varies on whether you drive a car or take public transportation.
If you drive, leaving your house requires taking your keys and it becomes a habit. Same with leaving work. If you drove there you need your keys to leave.
A good way around forgetting keys also is a realtor style lockbox either on the door or hidden with a spare key.
The key (heh) to not forgetting anything, though, is to have a consistent set of pockets for things -- I always keep keys+knife, flashlight, wallet+cash, iphone in specific pockets. The only times I get screwed up is when I wear clothing without the right layout of pockets.
Regarding the different pocket layout, I've also limited myself to just using the main ones for my day to day stuff, so two front and two back. Though when i wear cargo pants or shorts I do put my wallet on the pocket halfway my leg as it's more comfortable with sitting.
My car's trunk is similarly organized with a trauma bag, fire extinguisher, crowbar, etc.
I am checking and practicing grabbing [defensive item] often, worried that I am testing it wrong, i.e. that if it happens where I need that [defensive item] that I have placed it in a non-practical place.
I'd love to have a security consultant review my go plans and assist.
My moms house was broken into last night, and she awoke to someone stealing her laptop. She was just diagnosed with cancer and has a trach in right now - so it was super scary for her - because even in that instance, she cant even yell for help. The ADP alarm system failed her and my brother was MIA.
PROTIP: I go to the DAISO Japan store and buy little cargo zipper bags to organize all my tech work gear. Console cables, dsiplay adapters, USB charges etc in one - zip ties velcro, sticky-velcro etc in another. laptop chargers in others...
The DAISO store in SF Japan town is amazing for just this sort of thing.
I have kids - so I need to have things protected in multiple ways.
Not like the days of being single and you can just have [dangerous item] in the bedside table.
I'm not sure if I'd trust it to resist serious attack, but chording it a few times gives a reasonably large keyspace, opens quickly, and presents the weapon (loaded and chambered, no external manual safety on the glock 19) in a consistent position for drawing, so it's faster than just leaving it loose in a drawer.
In my trailer or tent in Iraq/Afghanistan, I just put a spare holster between the mattress and bedframe and slept with it there, which worked well, but was a higher risk environment and zero legal risk.
The ultra-badass thing to do was to pre-apply CAT tourniquets (loose) to all 4 limbs, so the operator could then tighten them when hit and continue in the fight. An 18D would then periodically loosen them, keeping the limb from being lost, and monitoring/timing for sepsis (which is the risk of leaving a tourniquet tight, letting tissue die, and then loosening outside of a hospital setting -- I think it's hyperkalemia and some other stuff too. I think the rule is 30 minutes of blood flow per 2 hours for up to 24h, but this was evolving at the time. It worked better for immediate response than relying just on direct pressure (israeli bandage, etc.), since it could be accomplished in 5 seconds directly by the operator (it's hard to even FIND where entrance and exit wounds are under a uniform, and sometimes there are multiple per patient per incident, although usually on the same limb).
It was fine when OCF-I, etc. people did it, but then utterly hilarious when random people copied them without understanding (not even infantry, but supply guys going on outside the wire road trips between bases returning from R&R...).
It was a lot like startups -- people learning as they went, in a rapidly evolving environment. The big fail, IMO, was rotating whole units out ever 4, 7, 12, or 15 months to have to re-learn everything again, and then sending them to an entirely different place when they returned. The British Empire system of rotating individual battalions or brigades through a unit which was permanently stationed in the occupied territory made a lot more sense I think.
Well, my situation was a bit different as I was in a special forces unit. For one, we had no women.
>The ultra-badass thing to do was to pre-apply CAT tourniquets (loose) to all 4 limbs, so the operator could then tighten them when hit and continue in the fight.
We've had this practice, but when you have a tourniquet(properly tied, cutting off all flow) on a limb, you have little to no control over it (to test this, tie a tourniquet just above your bicep and try to open and close your hand when it has no pulse). The only thing you can do is use other limbs to make up for the lost one. Furthermore, if that limb is a leg (the thigh in particular), in order to fully cut off the flow, it is necessary to apply so much pressure so as to break the bone (which sucks, but is better than dying). Lastly, even if the situation were dire enough to warrant these measures, where would you place the tourniquet on the limb? This is a problem for a few reasons. For example, I dont know about your unit but in mine, anything on us gets beaten up a lot for various reasons; damage to the tourniquet would be likely and problematic. Furthermore, during an exercise, the amount of blood that flows through your muscles increases thereby expanding the size of the limb. This would cut off blood flow and inhibit performance if you had a loosely tied tourniquet on it. If you resize it to be larger, then it would slip and fall in times of inactivity. Lastly, and this might also be a difference between units, we arent allowed to wear any bright colors, reflective mattes, sharp contracting colores, or have anything on us which identifiably changes our shape so as to mitigate detection. As I said, when it comes to the equipment (especially the medical equipment) everything is boiled down to a science.
>It worked better for immediate response than relying just on direct pressure
This is true, but the problem is the loss of use of the limb. If you are in a situation where you absolutely need to move quickly, a direct pressure solution to slow the bleeding until you are in a relatively safe area where you can then apply a tourniquet is better. A lot of the decisions you have to make are a balancing act of speed versus safety.
>but then utterly hilarious when random people copied them without understanding
This is very true. The number one mistake I see people who havent been trained to use a tourniquet make is they tie it (however poorly) on the injury. You are supposed to tie it 4 fingers above the injury because veins are elastic and when severed they jump back into the body, so you need to account for that and tie it higher.
Sorry if I went on too much, I just really like that so much thought has been put into every decision that we take for granted; if only we knew.
The most interesting thing I saw in 8 years was working with the guys from the Institute for Surgical Research (ISR), making sure they got x-rays and CTs of all injuries, so they could have a team of doctors go through and figure out which equipment and weapons worked, which didn't, and how various pre and in-hospital interventions ended up over a statistically significant number of patients. I'd still rather have USA/USN/USAF trauma surgeons than anything I've seen in the civilian world)
So while I love the convenience this idea provides for shared access to places, and for frictionless don't-even-have-to-get-out-my-keys access, locking oneself out is a solved problem in my book. (Sure, I could lose my keys, but I could also lose my phone—and the redundancy here is another nice and fun thing provided by this system.)
(This habit was largely inspired by getting a car which refused to let me lock myself out: if I pushed the lock button down on the driver's door while the door was open, and then shut the door, it unlocked itself. Previously I'd had one where you held the handle out to override this behavior, but this one insisted on being locked from the outside. And then I noticed that this was keeping my from locking myself out like I had a few times with the old one.)
Interestingly I seem to use more or less the converse of your method, also with great success: Always lock the apartment door from the inside. Whenever I leave the apartment, I therefore am forced to take the keys.
I suppose the most important thing is to be consistent with ones behavior, so that a subconscious habit can develop.
I ALWAYS have my phone though. Quite frankly, I look forward to the day when my phone replaces my access badge/key-card at work.
Of course there is the arguement "but someone could take your phone and access the MDF!" -- well they can always steal my access badge as well.
I have forgotten my badge countless times in my career though I have forgotten my phone all of once.
I call it the PhoneWallet. I made one for my droid Incredible.
"Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys..."
Especially with the PhoneWallet. I have my keycard, ID, and ORCA all conveniently on the back of my phone. The same tap gets me into work and pays bus fares. If I didn't have to carry a car key, I would just carry that 1 item.
All I'm looking for is one less item to carry, one less object in my life.
It's a lot more convenient than I would have guessed though, one of the nice bits that I noticed is my car lights up when I walk up to it at night. Not bright, but the LED under the mirror illuminates the ground around the driver side door. Very neat.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/lockitron-lets-you-unlock-y...
It's differently (visually) than the version that is on the website now but, it's certainly a Lockitron lock which I purchased almost a year ago.
Looks like they are rebooting their company with a new model and fundraising via Kickstarter.
The new version comes with two-way communication, Bluetooth 4 for offline access, and a host of other features.
We're not taking money for pre-orders; we're establishing how many to make.
>based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic